The case of the missing member

Buntport Theater revisits ‘Naughty Bits’ — a very silly play about, y’know

Tapping into the human fascination with genitalia and, to be more specific, the humor inherent in the penis, Buntport Theater’s remount of its 2014 comedy Naughty Bits couldn’t arrive at a better time. With the book-banning, nude-statue-blocking loons on the loose again in America, it’s imperative to lampoon the prudish culture warriors with the most potent tool at our disposal: ridicule.

Since Buntport only does original material with the same cast of four, the characters and actors always align very well. But the script for Naughty Bits in particular plays to each of their strengths with hilarious precision. And while I’d be lying if I said I could make strong comparisons between the original version of the show I saw in 2014 and the one I saw Friday night, it does seem that the troupe has really polished not only their individual performances but some of the more complex stage play that evolves as three disparate stories start to intersect.

At the top of the one-act we meet company members Brian Colonna and Erin Rollman in the sitting room of the fancy-schmancy English mansion Landsdowne House. Sporting an outrageous pair of (real) mutton chops and a three-piece suite, Colonna is in his element as high-flying American retail magnate Harry Selfridge — a widower entertaining his latest fling, Jenny Dolly. Stuffed with art, Landsdowne House is also home to the Landsdowne Heracles — an ancient Roman sculpture conspicuously missing the protuberant part of its junk.

Colonna plays Harry as the super-wealthy American he was in real life, but with a distinct attitude of a bon vivant less interested in making money than spending it. Jenny is a famous vaudeville performer past her prime on stage but still adept at getting rich guys to fund a lavish lifestyle, and Rollman has an absolute field day playing up the character as a manipulative sexpot whose just fine with penises in all their forms.

Next we meet an Art Historian played by Erik Edborg. As the tall, thin Buntportian most likely to play a nerd, Edborg has the dork-meter set to 11 as a 1950s academic bent on educating the audience on the wonders of Greco-Roman statuary. Armed with an ancient slide projector and screen (and a little piece of marble in his pocket he likes to fondle when nervous), the character is a living Wikipedia page who spouts a stream of facts interspersed with a thousand nervous tics, weird asides and half-finished thoughts. This is natural territory for Edborg, and he’s at the top of his game here with a performance that transcends all the stereotypical nerd tropes to create something truly original.

Erik Edborg discussing the Landsdowne Heracles with Hannah Duggan and Erin Rollman looking on

No Buntport show would be complete without the in-your-face comedic hurricane that is Hannah Duggan. Here, she plays a romance novelist in the flip-phone era who spends almost every minute on a call with her agent Dan. Penises are the topic, and she’s trying to work through how to describe them in her latest book. Nothing is ever off the table for Duggan, and here she’s blasting out an unedited stream of thoughts about the male member that’d have the Chippendales blushing.

All of the action between the three stories is happening concurrently onstage. When one scene ends, the characters continue their final line in silence as the lights come up on the next one. As the play progresses, the characters start to intrude on one another’s scenes until there’s a full-fledged collision for the perfect surprise ending to the whole mess.

Naughty Bits is an exemplar of what happens when a company of actors (and offstage Buntportian SamAnTha Schmitz) takes decades of experience together and applies it to a script perfectly suited to each of them individually and as an ensemble. This is Buntport at its best — a true gem of Colorado theatre that consistently delivers timely laughs, ridiculous situations and a wholly unique take on society and its lunacies.